Two Rivers Head Start Agency (TRHSA) is a Community Action Agency, covering a five-county service area in northern Illinois: Kane, Kendall, DeKalb, Grundy, and Boone Counties.

The beginning of Head Start goes back to 1965, when President Johnson introduced legislation designed to fund new education programs as part of his “War on Poverty.” Since that time over fifty years ago, TRHSA has evolved to operate under three major grants from the federal government. These three grants are: Early Head Start, Head Start, and the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG).

Between Early Head Start and Head Start, TRHSA has more than 1,000 enrollment slots available for children to either attend preschool or receive home-based services (888 four- and five-year-olds in Head Start and 170 infants and toddlers from birth to three-years-old in Early Head Start).

TRHSA’s Early Head Start program also provides home-based services to expectant mothers, as well as child development monitoring, family support services, and other related services to families of very young children from 0 – 3 years of age. Early Head Start is a community-based program operating in Carpentersville, Elgin and Aurora.

TRHSA’s regular Head Start program provides free comprehensive, half-day preschool for income eligible children throughout the five-county service area of Kane, Kendall, DeKalb, Grundy, and Boone Counties.

To support working families, TRHSA offers the full-day/ full-year KEYS program in both Early Head Start and Head Start. The KEYS program is available for parents working full-time or enrolled in school full-time.

Both TRHSA’s Aurora West and River Ridge Elgin locations offer the KEYS program in Early Head Start, while the Head Start full-day KEYS program is available at the following centers: Aurora East, Carpentersville Lake Marian, Elgin West, and Sycamore.

Reflecting our third federal grant, Two Rivers Head Start Agency’s CSBG program is designed to provide a range of services, which assist low-income people to attain skills, knowledge, and general assistance to achieve self-sufficiency. CSBG works with Kane County families residing in Aurora and Elgin.